McCarthy's subject and setting rely on the techniques of investigative journalism — realistic portraits of the Dutch country and people, detailed study of agendas, hardware, and jargon used by both terrorists and governments, as well as extended didactic discourse on a wealth of unrelated topics — roses, ethics, ecclesiastical and secular politics, even detailed drawings of solutions to the Cannibals and Missionaries game which gives the book its title.

The suspense thriller builds its appeal upon the expectation of violence and terror, as McCarthy's hostages and their captors await the shipments of paintings and the crisis in their own confrontation in their farmhouse hideout on a remote Dutch polder, the perfect setting of bourgeois tranquility in a country known for its neutrality and reasonableness. The expected blood and gore, however, does not appear in McCarthy, since the only victim of other than verbal violence is a cat, and...